This session will walk you through the process of editing a targeted area of OpenStreetMap, the largest collective effort to create a map of the World (think of it as the WikiPedia of maps).
Use the red arrows to navigate through the slides. A pdf version of this document is available here.
In this practical, you are going to learn how to contribute to the OpenStreetMap (OSM) project, helping map parts of the world at risk of humanitarian disaster. To do that, you will be using satellite images that will help you identify objects on the ground, such as buildings or roads, so you can draw them, effectively adding them to the map. The selection of areas in need will be taken care of by the Humanitarian OpenStreetMap Team (HOT).
OSM is the largest collective effort to create a digital free map of the entire World contributed by volunteers. Think of it as the WikiPedia of maps. Started in 2004 at UCL, it has grown substantially over the years and, currently, parts of the map provide better quality data than comercial alternatives such as Google Maps.
The HOT is the arm of OSM that is concerned with maximizing the impact of the Map for humanitarian purposes. As such, it connects traditional efforts in humanitarian relief with the OSM. Having reliable and accurate spatial data is crucial for humanitarian missions because it allows to manage scarce resources in more efficient ways. One of its missions is to keep updated the Tasking Manager, a list of urgent parts of the world to be mapped. In this practical, we will be using the Tasking Manager to select the area that we will be editing.
If you are interested in these issues, follow up on these links:
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This set of slides are heavily inspired by:
Of course any mistakes and errors remain entirely of myself
Content by Dani Arribas-Bel, licensed under Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International License.
Materials available at https://github.com/darribas/quant_geog